10 July 2016
Cheap labor Democrats weaken $15/hr minimum wage plank
The good news is that the national platform committee agreed on a plank calling for a national minimum wage of $15 per hour (the current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour). The bad news is that Hillary Clinton’s campaign added weasel words. Here, reports Politico, is the new language
We should raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over time and index it, give all Americans the ability to join a union regardless of where they work, and create new ways for workers to have power in the economy so every worker can earn at least $15 an hour.
Here’s CNN’s account of how the minimum wage plank was adopted:
Democrats amended their platform late Friday to call for a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage — a Sanders priority from the outset of his 2016 campaign.
The amendment calls for the change “over time” — less specific language than Sanders had wanted, making it a concession for Clinton.
The amendment calling for the $15-an-hour federal minimum wage was introduced by former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, a Sanders supporter.
Mary Kay Henry, the international president of the Service Employees International Union, proposed adding language that included the phrase “over time.”
The phrase “over time” reminds me of the phrase “with all deliberate speed” from Brown v. Board of Education. It accepts a $15 per hour minimum wage in principle, but weakens the urgency of getting to $15 per hour. The phrase translates as “no hurry; take your own sweet time.”
Why Clinton is being so refractory on this escapes me. Walking into Walmart in Kalispell last week I encountered a sign announcing that the store was hiring at a starting wage of $11–13 per hour. If market pressures already are forcing the big box stores to that wage range, $15 per hour is far from a whopping big increase. And the dogma of trickle-down economics notwithstanding, there’s no credible evidence that increasing the minimum wage is a zero-sum game that reduces the number of jobs.
Therefore, why raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour over time? Raise it to $15/hour now.